Int. j. econ. environ. geol.

Vol:4(2) 10-15, 2013

Available online at www.econ-environ-geol.org

Climate Change and Precipitation in Pakistan -A Meteorological

Prospect
Muhammad Sohail Gadiwala1 and Farkhunda Burke2*
Pakistan Metrological Department, University Road, Karachi
2
Department of Geography, University of Karachi, Karachi, Pakistan
1

*E-mail: burkegeography@yahoo.com

Abstract. Pakistan has suffered prolonged periods of precipitation fluctuation that kept going on for decades. Shifting between
such periods in northern and southern parts of the country often appears as a pace change. The object of this study is to assess prior
changes in climatic patterns over various regions of Pakistan and the future magnitudinal changes of climate that would impact on
water resources, which subsequently affect the ecosystem, health, food supply and countrys water resource sustainability. Trend
and variability analysis have been applied on countrywide meteorological data for the period 1961-2010. The study revealed an
increasing trend of 0.66oC in temperature and heavy and intense trend of 106 mm in precipitation during the past 110 years that has
exacerbated food and water supply demand in the southern part of the country. This increasing heat of 0.06oC per decade speeds up
the water cycle and evapo-transpiration processes. Atmospheric vapour pressure tendency has also demonstrated increasing trend
of 0.96 mm per anum in water cycle. Extreme weather events resulting in droughts and floods reflect changes in climate. Pakistan
has to combat water shortage by improving water reservoirs, regulating river water flow and adoption of other water conservation
techniques to manage food and water supply - demand.

Global warming over the past century has been caused by

human emissions of greenhouse gases (NRC, 2010). Change
in climate affect has increased global mean temperature
(Wallace, 1975; Stern, 2006) and melting of glaciers and sea
(NRC, 2010), change in precipitation patterns (IPCC, 2012),
rise in sea level (Rahmstorf, 2007).

Introduction
Meteorologists and climatologists believe that due to human
activities the mean temperature on the surface of the earth has
been increasing over the past century. At some places on the
globe, hot summer days have also become more prolonged
and frequent. Increased surface temperatures intensify the
water withholding capacity of the atmosphere, hence lead to
an increase in evaporation from the oceans and land, which
leads to an increase in globally averaged precipitation.
Furthermore, increasing rate of evaporation and shifting of
storm patterns result in more severe droughts than in the past,
while some regions can receive excess precipitation, thus
producing intense floods. Conversely, variations in these
extremes are natural, such that it may be difficult to
distinguish whether changes in intensity and frequency of
droughts and floods over short time periods can be endorsed
to human influences.

Changes of precipitation have been observed since the

beginning of the 20th century which amounted to about 2%
increase over the land area of the globe (Jones and Hulme,
1996; Hulme et al., 1998). This long-term global increase,
apart from other modes (patterns) of climate variability and
ENSO (Dai et al., 1997) neither reveals an increase which is
spatially nor temporally uniform though statistically
significant (Karl and Knight, 1998; Doherty et al., 1999).
Long-term trend multidecadal variations in Indian monsoonal
rainfall have been observed (Kumar et al., 1999a,b). In
Canada more than 10% (Mekis et al., 1999) and over the
United States between 5% and 10% precipitation has
increased since the beginning of the 20th century, but was
interrupted in the 1930s and early 1950s multiyear drought
anomalies (Karl et al., 1998; Groisman et al., 1999) and
pronounced during the warm seasons. Confirmed correlations
of increases in stream flow and precipitation have been
detected across much of the US (Lettenmaier et al., 1999; Lins
and Slack,
1999; Groisman et al., 2001) but with poor relations in some
regions (Lins and Michaels, 1994). Changes in snow cover
extent also influence the timing and volume of stream flow
(Groisman et al., 2001), e.g., increase in heavy snowfall
amount in Canada (Zhang et al., 2000) as well as significant
increase in rainfall (Akinremi et al., 1999); an increase in

United nations framework convention on climate change

(UNFCCC) assigned climate change to direct or indirect
human activities which altered the composition of the global
atmosphere; in addition to natural climate variability
observed over comparable time periods (UNCED, 1992).
Changes identified by statistical measurement, viz. mean
and/or variability in the state of climatic parameter(s) that
persist for an extended period of time such as decades or
norm (30 years period) are referred to as climatic change
whether occurring as a result of human activities or due to
natural variability (Le Treut, et al., 2007; IPCC, 2007).

10

SEGMITE

Muhammad Sohail Gadiwal and Farkhunda Burke/Int. j. econ. environ. geol. Vol:4(2) 10-15, 2013

precipitation over west China (Zhai et al., 1999a), northern

Europe (Schnwiese and Rapp, 1997), northern Europe and
Scandinavia (Hanssen- Bauer et al., 2000), and dry in winter
over southern Europe and the Mediterranean since the past
50 years (Piervitali et al., 1998; Romero et al., 1998).

by the differences between data amount and arithmetical

mean of the data. The greater the difference/departure, the
greater is the level of variability and vice versa. Many
reseachers used such technique for finding variability in
climate on diversified time scale(s) (National Research
Council 1998, 1996; American Meteorological Society
2000; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2001;
Zhaohua et al., 2008; also references therein) and outlier in
data mining (Hodge and Austin, 2004; Chandola et al.,
2009). In house small routine has been developed for spatial
trend analysis. Least square method has been employed for
getting slope of trend. Kendall software developed by USGS
has also been exercised in this study for trend study.
MiniTab, Excel adds-in XLSTAT and MYSTAT have been
used for statistical tests/analysis, etc. ArcGIS has been
applied for spatial trend review.

Surface air temperature is the most commonly considered

indicator of climate change (Tamara et al., 1999). Warm
temperatures trigger the evaporation rate, consequently
increasing the atmospheric water vapour. Consequent
increase in surface temperature leads to development of
intense hydrological cycle which ultimately enhances
frequent heavy precipitation events (Houghton et al., 1992;
Kattenberg et al., 1996). Worldwide large variability in
temperature and precipitation has been recorded over the
globe including Pakistan. There exists a considerable spatial
and temporal variability in both temperature and
precipitation over the region. There is also a clear
association between El Nio events and weak monsoons
over the sub-continent (Mitra, 2002). Study reveals that 21
drought years were recorded during the period 1871-1988,
out which 11 were El Nio years too. Another study on
90-year data for the period 1901- 1990 reveals that rainfall
deficiencies were recorded in all 7 strong El Nio cases.

Results and Discussion

Spatial distribution of mean annual total precipitation has
been depicted in Fig.1a. Spatial pattern of Z-statistics has
been presented using the results emerging from
Mann-kendall test, although the trend results were
produced using all tests (viz. Mann-kendall test, Modified
Mann- kendall test and Mann-kendall) with pre-whitening
of series for trend analysis. Fig. 1b and 1c reveals the
spatial pattern of trend statistics for annual precipitation.
The analysis exhibit significant negative, insignificant
negative, insignificant positive and significant positive
trends at 90% confidence interval, respectively. It can be
observed that annual precipitation shows an overall rising
trend, although insignificant declining trends are revealed
in scattered patches throughout the country. A decline in
precipitation in most of the area has been noted in the
northeast and south to southwest. The water resource
potential of the country is showing insignificant
improvement. The linear analysis reveals that there has
been a rising trend in precipitation from 1 to 5 mm in
greater part of the country during the past fifty years. The
spatial linear trend of mean annual temperature has been
shown in Fig. 2. Linear trend analysis reveals warming
trend over the country (Fig. 2a). Warming trend aggregates
with rising water regime and vice versa. The Linear trend
analyses of highest precipitation in past 24 hours and mean
annual vapour pressure have been depicted in Figs. 2b and
1c, respectively. Highest precipitation of past 24 hour s
extreme events and trend of mean annual vapour pressure
tendency have uprising trends in space and time.

In the last couple of decades, variation in precipitation has

been observed in various areas of Pakistan. Short and
intense precipitation brought floods while various areas
faced droughts. Drought in 1998-2001 gripped Pakistan and
its neighbouring countries. On July 23, 2001 heavy down
poured of about 620mm during 10 hours in Islamabad
caused floods in Nala Laiee. On July 1, 2005 155mm heavy
downpour occurred in Karachi during two to three hours.
Two historic super cyclones, i.e., Gonu (02A) of Cat-5 and
Yemin (03B) of Cat-1 developed in the Arabian sea which
hit the Makran coast and adjoining countries. Due to heavy
flood in Pakistan the loss of lives and damage to properties
were reported in 2003 in Sindh, in 2007 in KPK and coastal
Sindh, and in late July 2010 almost all over Pakistan.
Pakistan lies in a region where the average temperatures are
expected to be higher than the global averages. Its land area
is mostly arid and semi-arid (about 60 % of the area receives
less than 250 mm of rainfall per year and 24% receives
between 250-500 mm). Its rivers are predominantly fed by
the Hindukush-karakoram-himalaya glaciers which are
reported to be receding rapidly due to global warming. Its
economy is largely agrarian and hence highly climate
sensitive. Under the influence of all these factors, the water
and food security of the country are under serious threat. In
this study change of climate has been studied in
meteorological prospect and change in precipitation over
Pakistan has been examined through meteorological data
appraisal. Humidity, etc.) of 51 meteorological stations have
been obtained from CDPC, PMD, Karachi, Pakistan.
Precipitation and temperature data analysis for the period
1901-2010 and wind speed, humidity etc. for the period
1961-2010. In order to determine climate change in Pakistan,
methods of deviation from Arithmetic mean of
precipitation/temperature (Conrad and Pollar, 1950) is used.
The degree of variation is shown

The 110 years of mean temperature and precipitation data

(1901-2010) of Pakistan reveal an increasing trend of
about 0.66oC in temperature (Fig. 3) and an increasing
trend of about 106 mm in precipitation (Fig. 4). Monsoon
precipitation increased throughout the country except in
Balochistan province and coastal belt of Sindh and
Balochistan where it decreased significantly. Increase of
precipitation from western disturbance is greater than
that of monsoons within the country. This western
disturbance contributes precipitation to the western part
of Balochistan and entire Sindh province.

Data and Methodology

Climate data (viz. precipitation, temperatures, wind speed,

11

Muhammad Sohail Gadiwal and Farkhunda Burke/Int. j. econ. environ. geol. Vol:4(2) 10-15, 2013

Fig. 1. Spatial distribution of (a) mean annual total precipitation (b) Mann-kendall s z-statistics of mean annual total
precipitation (c) trend of highest precipitation in past 24 hours (period:1909-2010)

Fig. 2. Spatial distribution of linear trend analysis of (a) mean annual total precipitation, (b) mean annual
temperature and (c) mean annual vapour pressure (period: 1901-2010).

Fig. 3. Mean annual temperature (oC) of Pakistan and its trend during the periods 1901-2010.

sea level is about 1.5 mm per year whereas along the coast of
the Arabian Sea in Pakistan it is 1.1 mm per year (Khan, et al.,
2000). In the 20th century, reduction of snow cover in the
Northern hemisphere was observed since 1920 (IPCC, 2007).
The Global Climate Models (GCMs) is good for analysis of
change in climate (Fiona, et al., 2004). The projected
precipitation by GCMs indicates 12.16 + 8.91 mm increase in

Fourth assessment report of IPCC (2007) expected an

increase of 1.8-3.4oC up to the end of the 21st century. Severe
impacts of this warming are expected on melting of glaciers,
extreme climate events, global precipitation and sea level rise
etc. during the 21st century. Globally, 17 cm rise in the sea
level was observed which is projected to about 28-42 cm rise
for the 21st century (IPCC, 2007). In other words, average
global rise in
12

Muhammad Sohail Gadiwal and Farkhunda Burke/Int. j. econ. environ. geol. Vol:4(2) 10-15, 2013

monsoon (summer) precipitation and -5.12 + 4.78 mm

decrease in winter precipitation. An increase of about 3.48 +
5.78 mm is reported in annual precipitation of Pakistan by
GCMs.

But at the same time, water vapour acts as a green house gas
by trapping radiation in the lower atmosphere. Vapour
pressure indicates high variation in space and time all over the
country except western part of Balochistan where its rate has a
decreasing tendency. Potential evapo transpiration rate has an
increasing tendency in almost whole Balochistan and Sindh,
KPK/FATA, GB/AJK revealed decreasing trends during the
study period.

Box and whisker Plot of mean annual total precipitation

(1961-2010) for all 51 meteorological stations in Pakistan has
also been analyzed and shown in Fig. 5. Chilas in GB; Kalat,
Khuzdar, Ormara, Pasni, Punjgur and Quetta in Balochistan;
Balakot, Chitral and Parachinar in KPK; Bahawalpur,
Faisalabad and Multan in Punjab and Badin in Sindh reveal
IQR higher than third quartile, while only Chitral in KPK
records IQR, lower than first quartile in annual precipitation
data.
Evaporation is the process by which water vapour enters the
atmosphere. This atmospheric moisture is associated to cloud
formation and rainfall. Evaporation acts like an air conditioner
for the surface because heat is used when water enters the
atmosphere as moisture.

Fig. 4. Mean annual total precipitation (mm) of Pakistan and its trend during the periods 1901-2010.

Fig. 5. Box and whisker plot of areal mean annual total precipitation (1961-2010) in Pakistan. The small (red) double circle is the
mean value, the center point of the box denotes the median values and the height of box is the difference between the third
and first quartiles (IQR). Any data observation lying 1.5 IQR lower than the first quartile or 1.5 IQR higher than the third
quartile can be considered an outlier in the statistical sense, indicated by asterisk.

13

Muhammad Sohail Gadiwal and Farkhunda Burke/Int. j. econ. environ. geol. Vol:4(2) 10-15, 2013

Conclusions
The water and thermal regimes may change the climate of
Pakistan. The higher variability of precipitation regime will
increase the frequency and severity of floods and droughts in
Pakistan. Thermal regime changes are anticipated to be
accompanied by much increased impacts on extreme events,
precipitation patterns, melting of glaciers on Himalayan,
Hindukush and Karakoram ranges, which will lead to a rise in
Arabian Sea level in the next couple of two to three decades.
Subsequently, a reduction in river flow will ensue and water
scarcity in the country will become more intensified.

References
Akinremi, O.O; McGinn, S.M; Cutforth, H.W. (1999).
Precipitation trends on the Canadian prairies. Journal of
Climate, 12, 2996-3003.
American Meteorological Society, (2000). Glossary of
Meteorology.http://amsglossary.allenpress.com/
glossary.
Chandola, V; Banerjee, A; Kumar, V. (2009). Anomaly
detection: A survey. ACM Computing Surveys, 41(3),
1.
Conrad, V; Pollak, L.W. (1950). Methods in Climatology.
Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Dai, A; Fung, I.Y; Del Genio, A.D. (1997). Surface observed
global land precipitation variations during 1900-88.
Journal of Climate, 10, 2943-62.
Doherty, R.M; Hulme, M; Jones, C.G. (1999). A gridded
reconstruction of land and ocean precipitation for the
extended tropics from 1974-1994. International Journal
of Climatol, 19, 119-42.
Groisman, P.Ya; Karl, T.R; Easterling, D.R; Knight, R.W;
Jamason, P.B; Hennessy, K.J. (1999). Changes in the
probability of heavy precipitation: important indicators of
climatic change. Clim. Change, 42, 243-83.
Groisman, P.Ya; Knight, R.W; Karl, T.R. (2001). Heavy
precipitation and high streamflow in the United States:
trends in the 20th century. Bull. Am. Meteorol Soc., 82,
219-46.
Hanssen-Bauer, I; Frland, E.J. (2000). Temperature and
precipitation variations in Norway 1900-1994 and their
links to atmospheric circulation. International Journal of
Climatol, 20, 1693-708.
Hodge, V.J; Austin, J. (2004). A Survey of Outlier Detection
Methodologies. Artificial Intelligence Review, 22(2), 85.
Houghton, J.T; Callander, B.A; Varney, S.K. (1992). Climate
Change, The Supplementary Report to the IPCC
Scientific Assessment, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, UK, 1892.
Hulme, M; Osborn, T.J; Johns, T.C. (1998). Precipitation
sensitivity to global warming. Comparison of
observations with HadCM2 simulations. Geophys Res
Lett., 25, 3379-82.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, (2001). Climate
change, The Scientific Basis. Contribution of Working
Group I to the Third Assessment Report

14

of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,

Cambridge University Press, 881pp.
IPCC (2012). Summary for policymakers in: Managing the
risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate
change adaptation [Field, C.B; Barros, V; Stocker, T.F;
Qin, D; Dokken, D.J; Ebi, K.L; Mastrandrea, M.D;
Mach, K.J; Plattner, G.-K; Allen, S.K; Tignor, M; and
Midgley, P.M; (eds.)]. A Special Report of Working
Groups I and II of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY,
USA.
IPCC (2007). Climate change, Synthesis Report, A Report of
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the
Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, Core Writing Team,
Pachauri, R.K. and Reisinger, A. (Eds.), IPCC, Geneva,
Switzerland. pp 104
Jones, P.D; Hulme, M. (1996). Calculating regional
climatic time series for temperature and precipitation:
methods and illustrations. International Journal of
Climatol, 16, 361- 77.
Karl, T.R; Knight, R.W. (1998). Secular trends of
precipitation amount, frequency, and intensity in the
USA. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 79, 231-41.
Kattenberg, A.F; Giorgi, H; Grassl, G.A; Meehl, J.F.B;
Mitchell, R.J; Stouffer, T; Tokioka, A.J; Weaver;
T.M.L; Wigley. (1996). Climate models projections
of future climate, in climate change, The Science of
Climate Change, edited by Houghton, J.T; Filho,
L.G.M; Callandar, B.A; Harris, N; Kattenberg, A; and
Maskell, K; pp. 285-357, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, UK, 1996.
Khan, T.M.A; Razzaq, Q.A; Chaudhry, Q.Z; Dewan, Q.A;
Kabir, A; Sarker, A. (2002). Sea level variations and
geomorphological changes in the coastal belt of
Pakistan, Marine Geodesy, 25(1-2), 159-174.
Kumar, K.K; Kleeman, R; Crane, M.A; Rajagopalan, B.
(1999a). Epochal changes in Indian monsoon-ENSO
precursors. Geophys. Res. Lett., 26, 75-8.
Kumar, K.K; Rajagopalan, B; Crane, M.A. (1999b). On
the weakening relationship between the Indian
monsoon and ENSO. Science, 284, 2156-9.
Le Treut, H.R; Somerville, U; Cubasch, Y; Ding, C;
Mauritzen, A; Mokssit, T; Peterson, Prather, M. (2007)
Historical overview of climate change science. In:
climate change, The Physical Science Basis.
Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth
Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change [Solomon, S; Qin, D; Manning, M;
Chen, Z; Marquis, M; Averyt, K.B; Tignor, M; and
Miller, H.L. (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY,
USA.
Lettenmaier, D.P; Wood, A.W; Palmer, R.N; Wood, E.F;
Stakhiv, E.Z. (1999). Water resources implications
of global warming: a US regional perspective.
Climate Change, 43, 537-79.
Lins, H.F; Michaels, P.J. (1994). Increasing US streamflow
linked to greenhouse forcing. Earth Obs Syst, Trans

Muhammad Sohail Gadiwal and Farkhunda Burke/Int. j. econ. environ. geol. Vol:4(2) 10-15, 2013

Am Geophys Union (Eos Trans AGU), 75(281), 2845.

Lins, H.F; Slack, J.R. (1999) Streamflow trends in the
United States. Geophys. Res. Lett., 26, 227-30.
Mekis, E; Hogg, W.D. (1999) Rehabilitation and analysis of
Canadian daily precipitation time series. Atmos-Ocean,
37(1), 53-85.
Mitra, A.P. (2002) Climate in South asia and water resources, A
Draft Article Circulated in Internet Among the APN South
Asia Water and Climate Change Study Team Members, New
Delhi, India.
National Research Council, (1996) Learning to predict climate
variations associated with El Nio and the Southern
Oscillation, National Academy Press, 171pp.
National Research Council, (1998) Decade-to-century- scale
climate variability and change, National Academy Press,
142pp.

Schonwiese, C.D; Rapp, J. (1997) Climate trend atlas of

Europe based on observations, 1891-1990. Dordrecht,
Netherlands Kluwer Academic Publishers, p. 228.
Stern, N. (2006) The economics of climate change The Stern
Review. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press.
Tamara, S; Ledley, E.T; Sundquist, S.E; Schwartz, D.K; Hall,
J.D; Fellows; Trimothy, l.K. (1999) Climate change and
greenhouse gases, backgrond information for AGU
(American Geophysical Unoin), Position Statement,
EOS, 80(39), p 453.
UNCED (1992) United Nations General Assembly (resolution
45/212 of 21 December 1990). Objectives article 1(2),
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change Open for signature, United Nations Conference
on Environment and
Development (UNCED), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Wallace, B; (1975) Climatic change: are we on the brink of a
pronounced global warming?. Science, 189, 460-463.

NRC (2010) Advancing the science of climate change. National

Research Council. The National Academies Press,
Washington, DC, USA.

Zhai, P.M; Sun, A; Ren, F.M; Liu, X; Gao, B; Zhang, Q.

(1999) Changes of climate extremes in China. Clim
Change, 42, 203-18.

Piervitali, E; Colacino, M; Conte, M. (1998) Rainfall over the

central-western mediterranean basin in the period 1951-1995:
Part IR precipitation trends. Geophys Space Phys, 21C(3),
331-44.

Zhang, X; Vincent, L.A; Hogg, W.D; Niitsoo, A. (2000)

Temperature and precipitation trends in Canada during
the 20th century. Atmos-Ocean, 38, 395-429.

Rahmstorf, S. (2007) A semi-empirical approach to projecting

future sea-level rise. Science, 315(5810), 368-370.
Romero, R; Guijarro, J.A; Ramis, C; Alonso, S. (1998) A 30-year
(1964- 1993) daily rainfall data base for the Spanish
mediterranean regions: first exploratory study. International
Journal of Climatol, 18, 541-60.

15

Zhaohua, Wu; Edwin, K; Schneider, B.P; Kirtman, E.S;

Sarachik, N.E; Huang, Compton, J; Tucker. (2008) The
modulated annual cycle - an alternative reference frame
for climate anomalies, Climate Dynamics, 31(7-8),
823-841.